Cisco Beats Fourth Quarter Analyst Expectations of 45 Cents Per Share – Revenues Up 4%

Cisco beat fourth quater analyst expectations with net sales up 4% compared to last year.  Overall revenues were $11.7 billion with reporting of 47 cents per share. For the year, net sales were $46.1 billion , up 7% compared to last year.

Analysts had forecast a profit of 45 cents a share, on revenue of $11.62 billion, according to FactSet.

Looking ahead to its fiscal first-quarter, analysts expect a profit of 46 cents and revenue of $11.67 billion, or year-over-year growth of 4%.

Net income for the year was $8 billion.

Cisco CEO John Chambers warned analysts back in May of a “cautious IT spending environment” and a “very slow painful progress” in a market recovery. But that may been an over cautious view for the telecommunications giant.

Most noteworthy is the growth in data center revenues. Revenues were up 90% compared to last year. Revenues compared to last year were up 42%. Chambers cited its unified data center strategy as a driver for the company’s growth. He referred to the company’s focus on unified network, compute and storage as a driver for the growth.

Chambers made a point of discussing VCE, Cisco’s partnership with VMware and EMC to offer converged infrastructure environments.  He said orders were up 58% compared to last year.

Chambers said that for 2013, the company expects weaker demand in its public sector business due to constricted spending. He said the company expects cloud spending and revenues from service providers to be sources of growth for the 2012 fiscal year.